How to become a fashion designer

Get Industry Experience

Work experience is invaluable, therefore we advise getting as much as you can, so you can get a proper feel for the fashion industry.

It doesn’t matter what kind of fashion work experience it is. Internships or volunteer jobs don’t require a degree, so apply to as many design, manufacturing or marketing firms as you can.

You will gain knowledge of how the industry works in all its forms, from retail to production to design and distribution, to provide you with the know-how of all that fashion designing entails.

Victoria Rangayah, designer from Z-Mode, tells us how work experience helped her. “I have done my internship at Guess Inc South Africa and later worked as a denim wear designer for a manufacturing company in South Africa.

This experience was very beneficial to my current knowledge of fashion industry. I have learned how the fashion process ‘from sketch to the final product’ really works, something you can’t learn from any theory books.”